The technology and communications revolution of the past decade has transformed everyday life in modern-day society. People now access almost everything electronically. From ebooks to electronic newspapers, to the ubiquitous email, the 21st century is fast moving away from the analog world of paper or printed media. This should not be a surprise as the paper medium is not only resource intensive but also quite inconvenient in today's fast moving world. Printed material cannot be easily edited and any edits or changes require a reprint of the material as well as a redistribution of the reprinted material. As well, printed material requires the consumption of limited (and some say dwindling) natural resources. Such resources can be expensive and those who are slaved to printed media are less able to adjust to fast moving market forces and developments.
In the retail space and, more precisely, in the restaurant field, menus can represent a periodic non-recoverable expense which can tie restaurants to sometimes undesired circumstances. When restaurants print off their menus, they are locked into the prices listed on the menu. As well, restaurants are tied to the menu items presented on their printed menus. Changing market conditions (such as the price of the raw food materials or the stock of raw food materials that a restaurant may have) cannot be taken into account in the menus as changing the items or their prices would require a reprinting of the menus. While the reprinting of a menu may not be as much of an issue for small establishments, large restaurant chains are stuck with not just their menu offerings but also with the prices for those offerings.
In addition to the above drawbacks, paper or printed menus have the added drawback of requiring high input resource costs (typesetting costs, layout costs, raw material costs, etc.). Another drawback to printed menus is that volatile raw material costs for foodstuffs or labor (ie minimum wage increases) cannot be taken into account when preparing the printed menus. As such, when food or labor prices go up, the prices at which the restaurant sells its products cannot similarly go up as the printing costs for new menus, especially for large restaurant chains, can be quite prohibitive.
Yet a further drawback to printed menus is that current menus inadvertently promote the concept of keeping the customer inside the restaurant. Customers have to wait for wait staff with the printed menus and provide their selections to the wait staff. Only after this process would the customers receive their food. When it comes time to pay for the meal, customers have to catch the wait staff's attention, wait for the bill, and wait for the wait staff to process their payment before they can leave. Unfortunately, with the busy schedule of today's consumers, such a time-consuming process can be irritating. For families with multiple small children just looking for a quick meal, the process can be an ordeal as they try to keep the children in check while waiting for the menu, the food, and, eventually, the bill.
Based on the above, there is therefore a need for methods, systems, and inventions that avoid or at least mitigate the issues noted above.